Erling Haaland: How many goals will Manchester City striker score this season

sportinglife.com

23 March 2023

Erling Haaland: How many goals will Manchester City striker score this season

The last time I wrote a 'how many goals will Erling Haaland score this Premier League season' feature was before the Premier League restarted following the World Cup, and at that time, the Norwegian had scored 18 goals in 14 games.

Between then and now, the Manchester City striker has scored a further 10 times in 13 matches – a shocking downturn really.

I say that in jest of course, as so high are the expectations around the young forward that anything less than a goal per game average feels like underperformance.

As we approach the business end of the season, Sky Bet have shared some incredible ante-post selections that involved Haaland, and some punters are in a great position to win big.

Prior to the start of the campaign, a host of customers placed a bet on the Norwegian to score 40+ goals at a whopping price of 250/1, and there remain 146 of those customers who have opted against cashing out so far.

Twenty punters staked £20 on a bet which would return £5,000 should Haaland net a further 12 goals in his remaining 11 league matches.

But what do the maths say about their chances of success? I'll go through the data, how we calculate the likelihood of Haaland scoring 'x' number of goals and reveal the probability of those bettors collecting on their 250/1 bets.

Has Haaland regressed?

A slightly quieter restart was not a total surprise, with Haaland overperforming his expected goals (xG) by 50% pre-World Cup; some regression had to be expected.

Since the break, Haaland has hit 10 goals from an xG total of 10.9, so he has performed more or less in line with expectations. Perhaps he is human rather than robot after all.

Still, the Norwegian is in a phenomenal position to break the Premier League scoring records for both a 38 and a 42-game season.

Haaland, currently on 28 goals with 11 games left to play, needs to hit the net just five more times to eclipse Mohamed Salah's 38-game season record, and seven more to surpass Alan Shearer and Andrew Cole's 42-game record.

Barring injury, it's a near certainty that he takes both, and given what we saw in the final week before the international break, he could do it in just two games. Just ask RB Leipzig and Burnley.

I say 'near certainty', but just how confident can we be? Well, this is when the maths comes in.

Calculations and factors

Based on Infogol simulations of upcoming matches using form-adjusted team ratings for all of Manchester City's opponents, we expect Pep Guardiola's side to score 26.5 times during the remainder of the season.

Haaland has averaged a league-leading 0.95 xG/95 this season, and given City have averaged 2.35 xGF per game when he has featured, we can calculate that the striker is, on average, contributing 42% of his side's xG on a game-to-game basis.

So, if City are in for 26.5 xG over their last 11 matches, then Haaland can be expected to be on the end of chances equating to 11.1 xG should he play in all of them.

Using our trusty poisson distribution we can then see the percentage chance of Haaland scoring five, six, seven and even 20 goals from here to the final game in May.

However, given Haaland is still running hot on his xG over the full campaign, netting 28 times from 22.9 xG for a 23% overperformance, we can't rule out that level continuing, so an 'overperformance' measurement has been added at 25% (for ease of calculations).

Likewise, while he may be one of the best finishers we've ever seen, he could go extremely cold and underperform by a bigger margin than he did in the last 13 games. While this is unlikely, for fun, an 'underperformance' measurement has been added at 25% too.

All of that means we now have this pretty-looking graph that shows us the likelihood of Haaland scoring 'x' number of goals should he perform as expected, overperform or underperform.

Will Haaland break the Premier League scoring record?

Given Haaland needs just five goals from 11 matches to surpass Salah's record, the chances of him doing so are incredibly likely, even if he underperforms.

Performing as expected, City's number nine has a 96.6% chance of breaking the record, and that figure increases to 99.4% if overperforming, while it drops to 84.0% should he underperform.

In terms of the 42-game record of 34, Haaland's chances of smashing that barrier sit at 86.6% if finishing at a normal rate, a lofty 96.7% should he outperform expectations, while the probability drops to 59.6% if he underperforms. So worst case scenario, the Norwegian still has a near three in five chance of finishing the season with 35 goals or more.

Whether he overperforms, underperforms or just performs as expected, it is more likely than not that Haaland will break both Premier League scoring records which would be a remarkable achievement in his first season in English football.

How likely is it then that he hits the figure we focused on at the start of this article – 40+ goals – that would see 20 punters win £5,000 each, and a further 126 land huge winners of their own?

Can Haaland score 40+ Premier League goals?

If he performs as expected, Haaland has a 32.2% (odds of 21/10) chance of breaching the 40-goal total. Now, that may not seem like a high percentage, but given the Sky Bet customers were on at 250/1 which is an implied probability of 0.4%, it's a huge increase in likelihood.

Overperformance sees the percentage chance of him hitting 40 goals climb to 63.5% (4/7), while underperformance suggests it's highly unlikely he gets to that total at just an 8.3% (11/1) chance.

All in all, punters on at 250/1 are in a great position, with Haaland now having a one in three chance of hitting the required line should he perform like an ordinary mortal in terms of finishing.

It has been a remarkable season for Haaland, and should he stay fit, it is incredibly likely we will witness the best goalscoring season in Premier League history. We might just witness a 250/1 winner, too.

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